23.2 Reading news, rn/rrn/xrn/trn/nn

Reading news requires a program that can select news groups, articles within those groups, and page through them. It should also be able to keep track of articles you've read and topics you want to see, or don't want to see.

One of the popular read news programs is rn in its 4 forms:

rn, trn - for a system that has the news spool locally mounted,

rrn - for remote news, when you read news on one machine from a news spool on a remote machine via nntp over ethernet.

xrn - X-windows version of rn which uses nntp to query a news server.

There are also nntp newsreaders for Macs and PCs. The OSU HomeNet software from UTS now includes these. With HomeNet you can dial in to the campus SLIP (Serial Line Internet Protocol) server, and connect to the news server with your client news reader.